Sir Francis Vincent, 10th Baronet


Sir Francis Vincent, 10th Baronet was an English Whig
politician.

Early life

Vincent was born in Bloomsbury on 3 March 1803. He was a son of Sir Francis Vincent, 9th Baronet and Jane Vincent. He "belonged to a very old family, which had possessed land in Leicestershire in the early fourteenth century, migrated to Northamptonshire and settled in Surrey, where the estate of Stoke d’Abernon, near Leatherhead, came into their hands by marriage into the Lyfield family."
His paternal grandparents were the former Mary Muilman-Trench Chiswell and Sir Francis Vincent, 8th Baronet, the British Ambassador to Venice in 1790. His maternal grandparents were the Hon. Edward Bouverie, MP and the celebrated hostess Harriet Fawkener. Among his maternal family were uncles Edward Bouverie Jr. of Delapré Abbey, Lieut.-Gen. Sir Henry Frederick Bouverie, and John Bouverie, rector at Midhurst.
Vincent graduated from Eton College in 1817. After Eton, he had a "perfunctory career in the cavalry."

Career

He was elected at the 1831 general election as one of the two Members of Parliament for the borough of St Albans in Hertfordshire. He was re-elected in 1832, and held the seat until the 1835 general election, when he did not stand again.

Later life

After leaving the House of Commons, he became the author of "triple-decker, silver fork novels," producing Arundel, a Tale of the French Revolution in 1840, and four others between 1867 and 1872. Vincent traveled around the fashionable vacation spots of Europe, including Baden-Baden, where the opening scene of his last novel, The Fitful Fever of a Life, was set in a gambling hall. According to Captain Gronow, Vincent was a gambler who "contrived to get rid of his magnificent property and then disappeared from society".

Personal life

On 10 May 1824, He married Augusta Elizabeth Chiswell, the only child of Richard Muilman Trench Chiswell and Mary . His wife inherited Debden Hall in Uttlesford from her father. Together, they were the parents of one child:
Vincent died intestate on 6 July 1880, Debden Hall passed to his daughter Blanche, who sold it to William Fuller-Maitland two years later. As he died without male issue, the baronetcy was inherited by his grand-uncle Henry Dormer Vincent's son, the Rev. Frederick Vincent, himself father of the 12th, 15th and 16th Baronets.